The House of
Romanov (
Russian: Рома́нов,
IPA: [rɐˈmanəf]) was the second imperial dynasty, after the
Rurik dynasty, to rule over
Russia, which reigned from 1613 until the abdication of
Emperor Nicholas II on March 15,
1917, as a result of the
February Revolution. The direct male line of the
Romanovs came to an end when
Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762. After an era of dynastic crisis, the
House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the
House of Oldenburg, ascended the throne in 1762 with
Peter III, a grandson of
Peter I. All rulers from the middle of the
18th century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that branch. Though officially known as the
House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and
Oldenburg Houses are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. "In early 1917 the
Romanov Dynasty had 65 members, 18 of which were killed by the Bolsheviks. The remaining 47 members were exiled abroad." In 1924,
Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the direct male-line patrilineal descendant of
Alexander II of Russia, claimed the headship of the defunct
Imperial House of Russia. His granddaughter,
Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia, is the current pretender, her only child
George Mikhailovich is her heir apparent.
Legally, it is not clear if a ukase was issued that abolished the surname of
Michael Romanov upon his accession to the Russian throne or of his subsequent male-line descendants, although by tradition members of reigning dynasties seldom use surnames.
Rather, they are known by their dynastic titles ("
Tsarevich Ivan Alexeevich", "
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich", etc.) In addition, since 1761
Russian rulers descend from the son of
Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia and
Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and thus they were no longer Romanovs by patrilineage, but belonged to the Holstein-Gottorp cadet branch of the
German House of Oldenburg. In such genealogical literature as the
Almanach de Gotha, the name of Russia's ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III is "Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov". However, the name "Romanov" and "House of Romanov" were often used in official references to the Russian imperial house. The coat of arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, and in 1913 there was an official jubilee celebrating the "300th
Anniversary of the Romanovs rule".
After the February Revolution all members of the imperial family were given the surname "Romanov" by special decree of the
Provisional Government of Russia.
The only exception were the morganatic descendants of the
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich who, in exile, took the surname Il'insky
The Romanovs share their origin with two dozen other Russian noble families. Their earliest common ancestor is one
Andrei Kobyla, attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of
Semyon I of
Moscow.
Later generations assigned to
Kobyla the most illustrious pedigrees. An
18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Prussian prince Glanda
Kambila, who came to Russia in the second half of the
13th century, fleeing the invading
Germans. Indeed, one of the leaders of the
Old Prussian rebellion of 1260-1274 against the
Teutonic order was named
Glande.
His actual origin may have been less spectacular. Not only is Kobyla Russian for "mare", some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobyla's sons, Feodor, a boyar in the boyar duma of
Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka (cat). His descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to
Zakharin, which family later split into two branches: Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of
Ivan the Terrible, the former family became known as
Yakovlev (Alexander Herzen among them), whereas grandchildren of
Roman Zakharin-Yuriev changed their name to
Romanov.
The family fortunes soared when Roman's daughter,
Anastasia Zakharyina, married
Ivan IV, the
Rurikid Grand Prince of Moscow, on
3 (13) February 1547. Since her husband had assumed the title of tsar, which literally means "
Caesar", on
16 January 1547, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa of Russia. Their marriage was a happy one, but her mysterious death in 1560 changed
Ivan's character for the worse. Suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, the tsar started a reign of terror against them. Among his children by
Anastasia, the elder (Ivan) was murdered by the tsar in a quarrel; the younger Feodor, a pious and lethargic prince, inherited the throne upon his father's death in 1584.
- published: 11 May 2015
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